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The team is coached by parents Laura Jones and Melissa Smith, with regular classroom help from parent Gus Dusenberry and weekend MathCounts preparation assistance from Cornell student Tom Chen.
(Left to right): Miryam Ginsparg, Michael Zhao, Justin Tan, Vivek Myers, Yuuki Real, Eric Dusenberry DeWitt Math Club also participated in the meet, taking 19th place overall. The DeWitt team is coached by parent Tom Fisher-York.
The Boynton and DeWitt Math Clubs each have about 20 members who meet two times weekly to work on problems in topics that are outside the usual middle school math curriculum. They learn combinatorics, number theory, and geometry, in addition to algebra. They spend time working brain teasers and math puzzles. The top six students from each club were chosen to represent their school in the state competition.
Prior to the state meet, both team competed in the regional MathCounts meet in February. It was a one-two finish for Ithaca City School District (ICSD) middle school math clubs at the competition, held at SUNY Delhi. Sixty-two middle students from a five-county area competed at the meet. The Boynton Middle School team took first place (for the seventh year running), with the DeWitt Middle School team finishing second. In addition, for the first time ever, Ithaca students swept the top 10 individual scores! Boynton students took the top four individual places, and had seven students amongst the top 11, with DeWitt students rounding out the top 10.
The top individual scorers from Boynton (B) and DeWitt (D) were: 1-Eric Dusenberry (B), 2-Vivek Myers (B), 3-Michael Zhao (B), 4-Miriam Ginsparg (B), 5-Reynold Gao (D), 6-Yuuki Real (B), 7-Paul Fisher-York (D), 8-Justin Tan (B), 9-Eli Zhang (D), 10-Felix Shi (D) and 11-Scott Smith (B).
Boynton's first place team was Eric Dusenberry, Vivek Myers, Michael Zhao and Justin Tan. DeWitt's second place team was Reynold Gao, Paul Fisher-York, Eli Zhang and Felix Shi. Although ineligible to place in the event, Boynton's alternate team of Miryam Ginsparg, Asha Duhan, Sherrie Qian and Scott Smith scored higher than third place finisher from Vestal.
Eric Dusenberry won the Countdown Round. As top male and top female finishers, Eric Dusenberry and Miryam Ginsparg each won a $1000 scholarship to SUNY Delhi. Reynold Gao of DeWitt was the top-finishing 7th grader at the meet; Andrew Huang of Boynton was the top-finishing 6th grader.
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